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mental health
A Global Message to TikTok: Stop Your Profit Model of 'Toxic and Addictive' Content for Kids
"TikTok must make its platform safe for children and young people to socialize, learn and access information and not be harmed."
Nov 25, 2025
A group of digital activists is set to deliver a message to social media giant TikTok on Tuesday to clean up its "toxic and addictive" business model.
The petition, which has more than 170,000 signatures and is being circulated by human rights watchdog Amnesty International, will be delivered to TikTok's office in Dublin, Ireland by activists Mary Kate Harten and Trinity Kendi of Ireland; Abril Perazzini of Argentina; and Noe Hamon of France.
In the petition, Amnesty accuses TikTok of becoming "a space that is more and more toxic and addictive," and can potentially harm the "self-image, mental health, well-being of younger users."
Amnesty International campaigner Zahra Asif Razvi said that the petition is demanding that TikTok completely redo its business model to be built around user safety.
"These signatures represent a global demand for TikTok to replace its current business model of an app that is addictive by design with one that is safe by design," she said. "TikTok must make its platform safe for children and young people to socialize, learn and access information and not be harmed."
The human rights group says that its own research released last month shows that TikTok prioritizes user engagement over safety, and will often send young users to videos featuring "depression, self-harm and suicide content" on its platform.
Lisa Dittmer, Amnesty International's researcher on children and young people's digital rights, explained that teen users who express interest in content related to mental health can be pulled into "toxic rabbit holes" that glorify self-harm.
"Within just three to four hours of engaging with TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed, teenage test accounts were exposed to videos that romanticized suicide or showed young people expressing intentions to end their lives, including information on suicide methods," she explained. "The testimonies of young people and bereaved parents in France reveal how TikTok normalized and exacerbated self-harm and suicidal ideation up to the point of recommending content on 'suicide challenges.'"
Amnesty's petition comes one week after the American Psychological Association (APA) published research that accumulated data collected in more than 70 other studies and found that excessive use of short-form video apps such as TikTok and Instagram "is associated with poorer cognitive and mental health in both youths and adults."
The research's findings were particularly troublesome concerning the impacts on young people's cognitive development, as they found that "repeated exposure to highly stimulating, fast-paced content may contribute to habituation, in which users become desensitized to slower, more effortful cognitive tasks such as reading, problem solving, or deep learning."
The APA's study found that having the ability to swipe away from videos that don't offer instant gratification "could support a pattern of rapid disengagement from stimuli that do not provide immediate novelty or excitement," and thus "may diminish attentional control and reduce the capacity for sustained cognitive engagement, as cognitive processing becomes increasingly oriented toward brief, high-reward interactions rather than extended, goal-directed tasks."
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Progressive Activist Avi Lewis Launches Bid for NDP Leadership in Canada
Lewis said NDP must “fling the doors wide open, and build a party for the 99%.”
Sep 25, 2025
The longtime progressive activist Avi Lewis officially launched his bid for leadership of Canada's New Democratic Party, which he aims to revitalize with a platform of economic populism.
Lewis, a journalist and documentarian whose grandfather helped to found the NDP in 1961, says the way to bring the party back to relevance amid an electoral low point is to “fling the doors wide open, and build a party for the 99%.”
At a kickoff party in Toronto on Wednesday, the former parliamentary candidate from Vancouver railed against the “Liberal-Conservative alliance” that dominates Canadian politics. The two major parties' leaders, Lewis said, "compete fiercely in public, while behind the scenes, they collude to boost corporate profits."
"In the name of protecting the country, the government is rapidly passing and proposing legislation that will change the culture and character of Canada," Lewis said. "From sweeping aside Indigenous rights and environmental protections for so-called nation-building projects, to rolling back higher taxes on the uberwealthy and digital giants, to the generational austerity of 15% cuts to public spending, to the $9 billion that materialized in an instant for the military this year, ramping up to $150 billion a year a decade from now—the changes afoot are extreme."
Lewis pledged to “build a government that is an instrument for the people, not for corporate Canada.”
The NDP—once Canada's third-largest national political party—has been ailing of late after a dismal showing in the nation's most recent parliamentary elections. The party, which held over 100 seats 14 years ago, dropped to a new low of just seven seats in 2025, not enough to even be recognized for committee assignments or federal funding.
The humiliating showing resulted in the resignation of Jagmeet Singh, who'd led the party for eight years, but was widely criticized by those on the left for his coziness with the establishment of the dominant Liberal Party and his failure to keep the NDP competitive. It is in this state of "political wilderness" that Lewis has emerged with an ambitious change agenda.
(Video: Avi Lewis for NDP Leader)
"Life in Canada today feels on the edge," Lewis said in a video released last week announcing his leadership run. "Everyone seeking a little stability, everyone being told 'You're all on your own.'"
He identified several causes of that precarity. One was the "economic attack" from US President Donald Trump, whom Lewis described as sending "disruption grenades" in the form of steep tariffs and annexation threats. But Lewis said that Trump merely "magnifies... the everyday emergency of trying to get by in an impossible economy."
According to one survey conducted in July, 57% of Canadians said their current incomes did not allow them to afford basic necessities like housing, groceries, energy, and cell phone plans.
"Working hard doesn't earn you a living," Lewis said.
"These days, every politician claims to be shocked by the costs," he continued. "What they don't talk about is why: The billions in profits for the tiny group of corporations that control every part of our economy. Three phone providers, three grocery giants, five oil companies, and the five big banks that fund them."
Lewis' plan to confront corporate power is years in the making. Alongside his wife, the acclaimed journalist and author Naomi Klein, Lewis rolled out the Leap Manifesto in 2015 as an agenda for the NDP. Leap focused on confronting the climate crisis, but its contents formed the basis of what he now refers to as a "Green New Deal." The accelerating climate emergency remains at the center of his agenda in 2025.
"Oil and gas CEOs," he said in the video, are "not just hoarding extreme wealth," but "foreclosing on our shared future."
Lewis has never held a parliamentary office, though he has run for a federal Vancouver-area seat twice before and achieved two third-place finishes, receiving 26% of the vote in 2021 and 12.5% in 2025.
In his bid to lead NDP, he has so far leaned heavily into his family legacy and his reputation as a lifelong activist who has "butted heads with the powerful," over issues like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the privatization of healthcare and public transit.
"For four decades," he said, "I have stood with workers, telling stories of working-class heroes and organizing for dignity in factories and fields, classrooms and care homes, shop floors and fishing fleets."
Lewis, who also identified free trade deals as job killers, proposed a "Green New Deal" as a means to revive Canadian industry and create "millions of good-paying jobs."
He has also proposed a wealth tax, a national cap on rent increases, a public option for groceries, and expanded universal healthcare that covers "medication to mental health."
During his speech Wednesday night, Lewis described NDP as "the only party that can accurately diagnose the cause of our everyday emergency, and offer solutions as big as the crises we face."
"The federal government has the power, the resources, and the responsibility to ensure the fundamentals of a good life—healthy food, truly affordable housing, functioning public transit, and hey, maybe a proper vacation once in a while," he said. "But we won’t get it if we don’t fight for it. And that’s where the NDP comes in. After all, the NDP is the original party of workers’ struggle. And in this moment of epic change and uncertainty, the party is needed as never before."
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'Just Kill Em': Fox News Host Endorses Giving Homeless People 'Involuntary Lethal Injection'
"Universal healthcare, housing, and anti-poverty programs are considered more 'radical' on Fox News than mass murder," said one healthcare advocate.
Sep 14, 2025
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade is facing calls to resign after suggesting earlier this week that the state should execute homeless people who decline help during a live broadcast.
Kilmeade made the comments during a Wednesday episode of Fox & Friends, during which the panel discussed the recent shocking video of the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska aboard a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a mentally ill homeless man, which has ignited a flurry of often racist vitriol on the right toward Black Americans and homeless people.
Another of the hosts, Lawrence Jones, claimed that the government has "given billions of dollars to mental health, to the homeless population," but that "a lot of them don't want to take the programs, a lot of them don't want to get the help that is necessary."
Jones continued: "You can't give them a choice. Either you take the resources that we're going to give you, or you decide that you're going to be locked up in jail. That's the way it has to be now."
Kilmeade then interjected with his suggestion that instead of jail, they should be given "involuntary lethal injection, or something. Just kill 'em."
As one X user noted, Jones and co-host Ainsley Earhardt, "[didn't] even blink an eye" in response to this call for mass murder.
While the claim that homeless people often "refuse" abundant services is a common talking point, it is not borne out by data. According to a report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness in 2023, more than three-fourths of direct service providers reported that they were forced to turn away homeless people due to staffing shortages.
But even in cases where homeless people are offered services—such as temporary shelter beds—and decline them, they often do so not because they prefer to be on the street but because shelters are often overcrowded and poorly maintained, or have restrictive rules that require them to separate from their families, pets, and belongings.
When homeless people are offered permanent shelter, they are comparatively much more likely to accept it. According to one 2020 study from UC San Francisco, 86% of "high-risk" chronically homeless people given access to permanent supportive housing were successfully housed and remained in their housing for several years, a much higher rate than those given temporary solutions.
But as Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, wrote on X, "Universal healthcare, housing, and anti-poverty programs are considered more 'radical' on Fox News than mass murder."
Kilmeade's calls to execute the homeless were met with horror and disgust from advocates. Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, called for Kilmeade to resign.
“It is dangerous. It shows a lack of human compassion and it is really the worst possible time for that kind of language to be expressed,” Whitehead told the Irish Star.
Jesse Rabinowitz, communications and campaign manager with the National Homelessness Law Center in Washington, DC, noted in The Independent that Kilmeade's comments come as the Trump administration "is proposing government-run detention camps and massive psychiatric asylums" to house the homeless.
In August, the president launched a crackdown against homeless encampments in DC that advocates say has left hundreds of people with nowhere to go and dependent on overwhelmed city services. Meanwhile, his administration and recent Republican legislation have introduced massive cuts to housing funding for homeless people across the United States.
“America’s homeless population includes over a million children and tens of thousands of veterans, many of whom served in Iraq or Afghanistan,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). “Nobody deserves to be murdered by the government for mental illness or poverty. These Fox hosts are calling for mass murder—it’s sick.”
Kilmeade apologized for his comment on Sunday, describing it as an "extremely callous remark.” There is no indication from Fox News that Kilmeade will be subject to any disciplinary action over his remarks, which critics found noteworthy given the punishments other figures in mainstream media have faced for saying far less.
Photojournalist Zach D. Roberts pointed out that earlier this week, MSNBC fired contributor Matthew Dowd for criticizing the "hateful" and "divisive" rhetoric of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk shortly after he'd been assassinated.
"On MSNBC, a contributor got fired for lightly criticizing Charlie Kirk," Roberts said. "Meanwhile, on Fox News, Brian Kilmeade calls for the murder of homeless people for being homeless. Nothing has happened to him. I don't know if there can be a more obvious divide in politics."
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